1948 Popular Mechanics Article On Chessie Steam Turbine

Thanks!  What a great article.  I live everything about it: the details on the loco and its engineering, the great feel for the period if brings - fantastic!

Glad you liked it Lee.

I just purchased a PS2 6-8-6 PRR Bantam Steam engine on line and will be delivered in a few days. Can't wait to hear the sound file.

Scott just a heads-up, to the best of my knowledge the MTH Bantam S2 Turbines do NOT have a whoosh sound sound file.  The ones I have heard chug.

 

Ron

You are probably right Ron as this is from an RTR set. Bummer. Hopefully it can be upgraded at some point.

I own the MTH C&O Turbine....so you know I like them!!! I still believe the turbine will come into it's own.....the ability to run on many fuels and efficiency will win out.....that and the monorail.....hey...a turbine powered monorail!!!!

 

That article makes me want to run my Turbine!!!! And those old PM articles are cool!!!....am I getting old!

Now a turbine powered monorail would be pretty cool.

Scott, if your new engine has a chug-chug be glad it does! I have the 30-1149-1 larger version that MTH made several years ago, with turbine sounds, and it sounds like crap, too-say-the-least!  I know that the chug-chug ain't prototipical, but guys at our club asked me to turn the static noise down, or off, when I ran mine.

P.S. They say the Scale Lionel Turbine has the same noise as mine does, so I probably won't be springing for one of the new Lionel Legacy Turbines either. 

I also have the 30-1149-1, and find the lack of chug-chug quite refreshing.  I like the whir sounds it makes.  I will admit that I was worried the 1st time I put it on the track and it didn't chug because I thought something was wrong.  I did a reset and that didn't change things, then I remembered that it was a turbine!  But to each his own.

 

I would also like to get this C&O on 3-rail someday.  Too bad there isn't a O36 version.

LOL. "Crap" is not what I was hoping for . . but since it's a PS2 from an RTR set (30-4060-1) a chuff sound would not be surprising. I seem to recall reading somewhere that a turbine steamer sound file was created from an M1 Abrams tank turbine engine. I could certainly work with that.

Somewhere there is newsreel footage of the S-2 running, being flanked by a camera / sound truck. I've seen it, but I can't remember where.

Even back then the turbine is relatively small and still capable of cranking out about 5000 hp. Makes me wonder if this technology will be revisited in the future as fossil fuels become more expensive.

Thanks for the link to that wonderful article! 

 

Rest assured that none of us will ever see a steam turbine locomotive again.  They were bad ideas in the late 1940s and they are far worse ideas today. 

 

Turbine engines, be they gas or steam turbines, are not efficient at part throttle.  That makes them acceptable for aviation or marine service where an engine is expected to run at full or near full power for hours or days at a time.  A locomotive spends only a fraction of its time at full throttle so the turbine is not an efficient engine choice for rail applications. 

 

Building mobile boilers is not desirable either.  They are heavy for the power they can produce and therefore inefficient to move.  They also require expensive maintenance and inspection.  The C&O and PRR turbines also operated on a total waste system.  They sent all of their exhaust steam out the stack.  That throws away water and energy.  Wasting water then was seen as OK since water facilities were available on steam railroads in the 1940s.  That is not the case today.  A condensing system would be necessary to recycle water and improve efficiency but that would add unproductive bulk and weight to a locomotive.

 

70 years ago GE and Westinghouse were making steam turbines in the 5000 HP range for marine use.  That was about the same power as a 4-8-4, 4-6-6-4 or multiple unit diesel so the potential for rail service seems reasonable.  But back in that era the US Navy came to the same conclusion as all the railroads except the C&O, PRR and N&W, that the steam turbine was more expensive to own and operate than GM or Fairbanks-Morse diesels.  Nothing has changed in the last 70 years to alter that fact.

 

Did you notice that the article said that oil reserves were expected to run out in 25 to 30 years?  65 Years later American oil production is increasing rapidly.  We just keep finding more and inventing better ways to get at it.  We will be seeing natural gas as a transportation fuel competing with diesel oil.  But piston engines in surface transportation will be here for a long time.

 

I looked at the pages after the C&O article and found a few inventions that did have a future.  The stamped sheet metal calk gun and plastigauge are still made and still useful!  

 

 

 

Actually, the biggest problem in using a gas turnine is not the part throttle issue - the M1 Abrams tank has used a multifuel gas turbine engine quite sucessfully.  In a locomotive, the issue could also be overcome.  And a turbine islighter and much more powerful than a traditional piston engine.  The issue is that the railroads have now invested heavily in the infrastructure and expertise to use piston engines, and a gas turbine, at least the one in the Abrams, uses a great deal of fuel.  However some of that must be attributed to the vehicle's 70 ton weight.  However, even that issue has been largely overcome through the use of what is basically a transmission.  Thus, at least in one application a gas turbine has been successfully used in a groundbased vehicle.  But I would not expect to see that application to rails in the near future.  More likely, I woud guess, would be LNG powered locomotives as the primary modification needed to run a gasoline piston engine on LNG is to the fuel system.  On a diesel locomotive, obviously the changes are more major given that diesel locomotives function on compression ignition and not spark ignition, and thus run much higher compression ratios.  Thus more extensive modifications need to be made, and some of the low rpm, high power advantage of a diesel will be lost if converted to a lower compression, traditional ignition style piston engine.

UP style Gas Turbine 8500GTEL locomotive running on NG with a transmission to match the required power to realistic engine speed.  UP #57 was run for a year on NG with good results, except for safe fuel handling concerns for a fleet application.  For today's design, a much smaller turbine could be used to produce the same power that was achieved with the GE frame size 5 "jet" engine used in those machines.

Ted,

Your post and the two that followed are some of the responses I was really hoping to see. I do remember reading that a big disadvantage for the PRR turbine was poor low speed efficiency. This makes sense because reaction turbines have a very high efficiency but only over a narrow band of operation. This seems to be solved with the M1 transmission. As you point out though, the amount of water needed is problematic.

 

I do love the ads and articles in those old magazines. Maybe I can find a full copy of that issue.

Scott

 

Glad to hear that you enjoyed the post and those that followed.  While the turbine engine in the M-1 tank could be considered a success (they work!) I don't think we are likely to see turbine power again, even in a military land vehicle unless it is a micro turbine driving a gen set on a hybrid.

 

The gas turbine engine in the M-1 is a historic artifact.  The Abrams tank was developed by Chrysler.  Back in the 1960s Chrysler was experimenting with gas turbine automobiles.  The gas turbine appealed to the Chrysler tank division due to the weight savings it offered.  A lighter engine meant more weight could be devoted to armor.  The Chrysler tank designers took advantage of the corporate turbine expertise available to them. 

 

Several armored vehicles have been fielded by the US military since the M-1.  The M-2 Bradley, the Striker and the Marines LAV all have one thing in common, they have piston engines.  And the same could be said of all the other main battle tanks in the world including the very fine British Challenger, German Leopard and Israeli Merkava.

 

Why have there been no new armored vehicles with turbine power since the M-1?

 

Unlike for profit businesses, the military has never worried much about direct fuel costs.  And given the low utilization of most military land vehicles and aircraft there is actually a business case that can be made for that.  Unfortunately, the fuel thirst of the M-1 has proven to have a far higher cost.  While the heavily armored M-1 itself is a highly survivable tank in combat our adversaries have found a much easier way to attack an American armored column on the advance.  In the drive to Baghdad the Iraqis let the M-1s go by and waited to attack the fuel tankers that always follow close behind.  The fuel trucks do not have the armor of the M-1 and are extremely vulnerable to almost every infantry weapon.  The fuel thirst of the M-1s gas turbine engine contributed to the many casualties suffered by the troops supporting the fighting vehicles. 

 

Chrysler was not the only one experimenting with gas turbines in land vehicles 50 to 60 years ago. 

 

Boeing built small gas turbine engines in that era and they were used in the Sweedish S Tank.  The Swedish design design used a diesel fueled piston engine as the the primary power plant and only used the turbine when dash speed was needed.  Boeing 502 gas turbine engines also were installed in Kenworth trucks and American LaFrance fire engines for San Francisco and Seattle.  The experiments lasted anywhere from a few months to a few years and could be considered no more than modestly successful.  The engines were light weight and worked well enough but the penalties of the turbine in a land vehicle were too great to displace the gasoline or diesel piston engine. 

 

 

 

That's great history Ted although a sad story about the tankers in Desert Storm. I have seen the Chrysler turbine driven auto at the Peterson Automotive museum here in LA. It's supposed to able to run on almost anything even cooking oil.

 

Seems that turbines on land vehicles like trains are glamorous as a prime mover they are just not practical. Still, you have to envy the innovation of that era and the will to buck the deisel trend and stay with steam. Must have been awesome to watch a turbine driven steamer fly by at full power.